Mary Hartwell Catherwood (Ohio, 1847-Chicago,1902) was a successful writer of historical romances, publishing both novels and short stories in periodicals such as Lippincott's Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and the Atlantic Monthly. Due to Catherwood’s husband’s business, she traveled and lived throughout the Midwest and developed her signature style of incorporating Midwestern culture, dialect, and local color into her texts. Although most of her novels and stories are set in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, some are also based along the American border with French Canada and on colonial Mackinac Islan

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"Monseigneur!" The abbé rose. We stood eye to eye. "I was at the side of the king your father upon the scaffold. My hand held to his lips the crucifix of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his death no word of bitterness escaped him. True son of St. Louis, he supremely loved France. Upon you he laid injunction to leave to God alone the punishment of regicides, and to devote your life to the welfare of all Frenchmen. Monseigneur! are you deaf to this call of sacred duty? The voice of your father from the scaffold, in this hour when the fortunes of your house are lowest, bids you take your rightful place and rid your people of the usurper who grinds France and Europe into the blood-stained earth!"

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